Thursday, January 15, 2009

Why I hate unnecessary Word docs!

Do you get emails like this?

Agenda for tomorrow's meeting attached.

Agenda.doc contains
Call in details: XXXX
Agenda:
 1.
 2.
 3.

It beats me why do we need a Word doc for this? Its a pain for the sender & pain for the reader. Why dont you just write it in the email itself?

Better still, write it in a Wiki and send the Wiki link (now dont attach the doc in Wiki, more about it later). That way Wiki contains all the Agendas, MOMs, status reports in one easily accessible way.

Someone might say, "I can create tables easily in Word doc" or "Wiki is hard to use", etc. Most of these apprehensions come from the fact that many people have not used Wiki and more importantly most of these artifacts (Agendas, MOMs, status reports) dont need any fancy formatting. Just simple text is *the* best way to use it.

Now coming to attaching a Word doc in Wiki. This is equally bad as per  my opinion.  Then you need a CVS/SVN, not a Wiki.

So keep it simple. Use Word for req specs, design docs etc.